plasticbag : It's official! Google buys Measuremap! - I've chatted to Veen a few times over the last few months but still this is a surprise. It's a lovely piece of work, which I imagine will fit Blogger very well. And I'm looking forward to hearing about Google's culture and swapping notes...

kayodeok : Official Google Blog: Here comes Measure Map - Our goal has been to use the power of web analytics to help bloggers feel that same sense of connection with their audience. Today, as the Measure Map team joins Google, our mission remains the same: to build the best possible user experience so people ca

philgyford : Ning | Developer : Home - New site that makes it easy to create your own social software apps, from the secretive 24 Hour Laundry. (I did most of the HTML/CSS.)

jkottke : Ning, a social software playground - Ning is a platform on which you can build your own social software...your own craigslist or del.icio.us. We were just talking about something like this the other day at Eyebeam, a MMORPG in which you write applications to adventure together or fight each [via]

kayodeok : Ning - Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications.

François Nonnenmacher : Ning - Ning (formerly known as 24 Hour Laundry) is a free online service (a Playground) for people to build and run social applications

Linkorama : Ning - Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications.

erikbenson : Ning: create your own social network site - At first glance, pretty interesting! Having trouble logging in but I assume that'll be fixed soon.

Rod Begbie : Ning "Playground" - At the risk of sounding a bit "Less space than a nomad. Lame", can anyone explain to me what's so exciting about a service that lets you build hosted not-quite-as-good-as-existing social apps? [via] #

cobra libre : ning - a "playground" (that is, "a field or sphere of unrestricted pleasurable activity") for "social applications" (i.e., "web apps made up of code and content that enable people to match, transact, and communicate with one another")#

Simon Willison : Ning - A social software app for building social software apps. That's so meta.

Paul Hammond : Ning | Home: Front Page - Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications.

plasticbag : I remain totally weirded out by Ning, even after their relaunch as a roll your own social network service - I honestly have no idea why anyone would want this, and it makes me sad because I feel like I'm missing something quite profound. The benefit surely would be in overlapping social networks? In values in scale? I'm totally lost.

kayodeok : Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites - "In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we?ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor"

Rod Begbie : Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites - Lovely little Googletreat to celebrate the anniversary of the moon landings. Make sure and try zooming in to the maximum resolution to see what the moon is made of.#

jimray : Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites - Just a small slice of the moon, commemorating the original moon landing 36 years ago. Still cool, though.

erikbenson : Google Moon - Zoom in all the way to see the moon at a level of detail never experienced before.

Simon Willison : Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites - Be sure to zoom all the way in for a Wallace and Gromit like revelation. (via) [via]

plasticbag : The Optimus keyboard has a tiny screen under each key, so that you can remap it easily to any combination - Mr Webb informs me that each button costs tens of dollars at the moment, and as such it doesn't look likely to go on the market any time soon - but it rocks and I want one...

Andy Baio : Maciej on Paul Graham and other blowhards - I love a spirited rant

Wayne Burkett : Idle Words: Dabblers and Blowhards - "I am not qualified to call bullshit on Paul Graham when he writes about programming, history, starting a business, or even growing up as a social pariah, but I do know enough about art to see when someone is just making shit up."#

Rod Begbie : Dabblers and Blowhards - Paul Graham (and ESR, and Winer) in bullshit-rant shocker. Despite people pointing to them, I've never been able to read a Paul Graham essay. Favourite quote: "Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer programs never do." [via] #

cameron : Idle Words: Dabblers and Blowhards - Maciej reveals the truth: programming is nothing like painting, as painters get laid for what they do

Steve Cook : Maciej Ceglowski beats the crap out of "Hackers and Painters" - He's got a beef with the Paul Graham/Dave Winer/ESR style of "hackers are" essay, and calls bullshit on Graham's qualifications to even -talk- about painting. (via Waxy)

plasticbag : A glorious response to essays on Hackers and Painters... - "Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer programs never do. Even not-so-great paintings - in fact, any slapdash attempt at splashing paint onto a surface - will get you laid more than writing software"

Phil Gyford : Mike Davidson: Introducing sIFR: The Healthy Alternative to Browser Text - Replacing HTML text with Flash-rendered text just to make it look prettier seems like precious designer overkill to me. But it's very clever and it does work.

Phil Gyford : i'm writing a book (4 August 2004, Interconnected) - Matt is clever and nice. His forthcoming book, 'Brain Hacks', should be good. Yay!

deusx : im writing a book (4 August 2004, Interconnected) - "Now if you'll just excuse me. GODDAMN THIS IS SO BLOODY BRILLIANT. Sorry, I've been wanting to say that for ages." Brain Hacks. As fast as it hits the bookstore, it'll be on my shelf.

Richard MacManus : Matt Webb's co-writing an O'Reilly book called Brain Hacks - "To get where it is, the brain has made some fascinating design decisions."

Will Pate : Brain Hacks - 100 practical and understandable probes into the design quirks of the brain. I can't wait.

Paul Hammond : im writing a book (4 August 2004, Interconnected) - 100 practical and understandable probes into the design quirks of the brain, concentrating on the sensory and motor functions and their coordination

Simon Willison : Great Hackers - "Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero."

Richard MacManus : Paul Graham: Great Hackers - I'm not a programmer, but to me being a hacker is about doing what you love and doing it creatively.

Jeremy Zawodny : phil on great hackers - phil on great hackers: controversy

Paul Hammond : Great Hackers - There's no way around it: you can't manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what beautiful is

Erik Benson : A well-written essay on a topic that ends up being pretty obvious - I do like all the Microsoft history folklore that's included

kellan : "Windows developers added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if so ran the memory allocator in a special mode." - I would *never* buy an operating system from someone who thought that was a good idea.#

anildash : How Microsoft Lost the API War - hey, joel's really good at this stuff

Andy Baio : Joel on How Microsoft Lost the API War - still catching up on my links since Baby Day [via]

Paul Hammond : Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War - The new API is HTML, and the new winners in the application development marketplace will be the people who can make HTML sing

Anne van Kesteren : How Microsoft Lost the API War - One for tomorrow, intro looks nice though#

Simon Willison : Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War - Read it through for a fascinating conclusion.

jkottke : Doug Bowman on the Blogger redesign - Doug Bowman on the Blogger redesign (The "publish thoughts, get feedback, find people" explanation of blogging on the front page of the site is as good as I've seen anywhere.)